An Orleans Parish judge Monday night rejected a plea deal for twice-convicted killer Juan Smith, in prison for the killing of eight people in two separate rampages almost 20 years ago. Prosecutors and Smith's attorneys spent almost six hours hammering out the deal, whereupon Criminal District Court Judge Frank Marullo took only minutes to scrap their joint proposal.

Assistant District Attorneys Donna Andrieu and Bobby Freeman, along with Smith's attorney, Kim Boyle, asked the judge to vacate Smith's current life sentences in exchange for two manslaughter pleas and an 80-year prison term. Responded Marullo: "I'm not agreeing to that."

Smith, 39, wants to overturn his conviction in a February 1995 triple murder on Morrison Road. It claimed the lives of the ex-wife of former New Orleans Saints player Bennie Thompson and her 3-year-old son, along with another man.

He was facing execution in that case, but during a court hearing in June 2012, Marullo nullified the death penalty while upholding his conviction. Marullo reasoned that the jury was inappropriately swayed by Smith's murder conviction months earlier in a notorious bloodbath remembered as the Roman Street massacre. Police said Smith and four other men killed five people on North Roman.

A jury convicted Smith of all five murders, and he was sentenced to serve five life sentences. However, in January 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Smith's conviction, ruling 8-1 that prosecutors had violated the Supreme Court's 1963 Brady v. Maryland ruling. It says that hiding evidence favorable to a defendant violates the constitutional right to due process.

Smith's attorneys later argued that 85 percent of the evidence presented to the jury during the penalty phase of the Morrison Road killings related to his previous conviction in the Roman Street murders.

The plea deal proposed on Monday would have required Smith to withdraw all of his Brady claims as well as any pleas of innocence. It would have had prosecutors amend Smith's August 1995 indictment, in which he was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, to two counts of manslaughter. Smith would have been required to serve two 40-year sentences consecutively, the maximum for two counts of manslaughter, minus the time he has already served.

But Marullo denied the motion. He said he was unwilling to "shortstop" a jury's decision to convict Smith.

"The thing I can't get over is undoing a jury," Marullo said. "I'm not depriving the jury of a decision that it has already made," he said.

Instead, Marullo said he planned to go forward with a scheduled post-conviction hearing scheduled. At 5 p.m. he asked that all witnesses be called. He threatened to stay as long as he felt it warranted.

"I was planning on going today, and I will,"Marullo said. "Until time runs me out."

And so, shortly before 6 p.m., Smith's attorneys began calling in several witnesses, all former law enforcement agents who were involved in the Morrison Road murder investigation.

Former New Orleans police Lt. Robert Italiano, who was accused and later acquitted by a federal jury in the cover-up of Henry Glover's death, took the stand. He was shown a 113-page police report written by the lead homicide detective on the Morrison Road case. That investigator has since died.

The report included a witness statement about Bennie Thompson, an early suspect in the case, due in part to the volatile relationship he was known to have had with his ex-wife, Tangie Thompson. Italiano said Thompson was known to have "a lot of animosity" towards his ex-wife.

When questioned by Smith's attorneys, Italiano testified that he spoke with a witness who knew of several guns that Bennie Thompson owned. They included a "red machine gun, and another weapon." Italiano said his team dug up Thompson's backyard to search for pellets but found none linked to the murder weapon.

When questioned by Assistant District Attorney Donald Cassels about whether Thompson was a focus of the investigation, Italiano said the former football player he was "looked at" but never considered a strong suspect because Thompson's 3-year-old son, Devyn Thompson, also was killed in the rampage. It was common knowledge that the little boy was "worshiped" by his father, Italiano said.

Shortly before 8 p.m., Smith's attorneys informed the judge that the rest of their witnesses would be unavailable to testify until Tuesday. The hearing is expected to continue Tuesday morning.